Video Game Of the Week

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Fortnite

Fortnite is a co-op sandbox survival game developed and published by Epic Games and People Can Fly. The game was released as a paid early access title for Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and on July 25, 2017, with a full free-to-play release expected in 2018. A standalone mode, Fortnite Battle Royale, based on the battle royale game genre, was released on the same platforms in September 2017. Also not too long ago Fortnite wasadded to iPhone.

Development

The game was first revealed in 2011 at the Spike Video Game Awards (VGA), with the former design director at Epic Cliff Bleszinski introducing a trailer for the game. The title of the game started out as an internal game jam project. During the Spike event, Epic wanted to switch things up with Fortnite. They want to do something fun and different with it, describing it as “a world where you explore, you scavenge, you build and ultimately you survive.” Epic Games Vice President of Publishing Mike Fischer said in 2015 that Epic recognized that they “announced this game too soon”, and that its lengthy development period was due to “very good reasons.” During the San Diego Comic-con in July 2012, Epic announced that Fornite would be an exclusive personal computer title, and the first one to be developed by Epic using their new Unreal 4 game engine, with a planned release in 2013.Development started in the Unreal 3 engine but as they progressed they had opportunities to work in several of the new sets and language offered by Unreal 4 for Fortnite. Fortnite’s development was spread among several of Epic’s satellite studios and also co-developed by People Can Fly. While still in development, Epic noticed the game industry shifting to games as a service model. Tencent helped the transaction by buying a significant share of ownership in Epic Games through stock in June of 2012. According to Mustard when collaborating with Tencent caused some bumps during the development of Fortnite. In November of 2013, Epic confirmed that the game will not be released that year, nor offered a target release date. In May 2014 an issue of Game Informer revealed that the title will be released as a free-to-play game. Fast forwarding into the development in the summer of 2017, Epic revealed that Fortnite was set for 2018 and available for Windows, macOS, and the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. At the time of the start of early access, Epic announced that Gearbox Software will help distribute the game on physical media once it is released.

Gameplay

Different modes

At the moment Fortnite has two game modes a player-versus-environment “Save the World” and a player-versus-player “Battle Royale”. The Latter game mode was released after Fortnite’s initial early access launch and later on offered a separate free-to-play mode on September 26, 2017.

“Save the world”

Save the world is a co-op sandbox survival game and it’s about exploring, scavenging items, crafting weapons, fighting waves of monsters, etc. There is a cycle in the game between managing one’s resources at the home base, and going out completing missions and quests.

In the metagame, players have an inventory of weapons trap schematics, hero characters, defender characters, and support characters, along with collected resources. Schematics are used for constructing weapons and etc. Hero characters are used to represent a character from one of four classes that players can use while they’re on missions. Defender characters can be summoned to help other characters with defense but that’s if only there are less than 4 players during a mission. Support characters are used to form various non-playable squads that provide bonuses to the player’s strength attacks, building speed, armor and etc.

During missions, players can make their fortifications from one of three base materials (wood, brick, and metal), and in a number of configurations, including floors/ceilings, walls, stairs, and ramps; players have the ability to edit these for more configurations, such as adding a door or window to a wall. Each fortification part can be upgraded with more resources of the same type to improve their durability, and when they are damaged, can be repaired by spending additional resources. Traps, which have a limited number of activation before they fall apart, can be placed on floors, walls, and ceilings, and arranged in means to make them more lethal or effective against husks. Traps may also include beneficial resources for players, such as healing pads, defender posts, and launch pads. Similarly, players can use a range of weapons but these have limited durability that drops as they are used or as a penalty if the player should be downed by husks and need to respawn without the help of allies. Players can construct new weapons, ammo, and traps from gathered resources, or find these from searching containers across the map. During missions, the game progresses through an accelerated day-night cycle; during the day, the husks are more passive and do not generally pose immediate threats, while during the night, bands of husks may spawn in and will aggressively seek out players.

Reviews pros & cons

Throughout all the review pages I read, most of them gave Fortnite 3-4 stars or a 7 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10. Most do compare both Save the world and Battle Royale. Most have said Save the world is not the best compared to Battle Royale. So, besides Save the world being a bummer, Fortnite is pretty much a great game.

Pros

Graphics (Pretty sure most people can actually agree that the graphics in the game is pretty spot on.)

Combat Combat doesn’t do anything new but nothing wrong either, just trying out different guns and the way they feel. Like you just want to switch out guns on and on but you also don’t want to keep using the same gun over and over again constantly.

Core gameplay loop most players to say that the core gameplay loop is absolutely amazing. It’s just simple, quick and intuitive and it just flows along really well with the game.

Progression even though the progression is slow, but once you get into the second area it will be the most fun anyone has ever had while playing a game. But there is some downfall for the progression so it will fall onto the cons list.

Cons

Progression

The grind and Inventory for the grind players will disagree about this fallen into the cons list but some will actually agree with this like the grind is real in this game and people will say it’s a little too much which isn’t really a problem that’s honestly their own opinion on it. Also, inventory is always bored down with things players don’t even need. That is due to the auto loot mechanic they have in the game.

Loot and Llamas Every weapon in the game break without being able to be repaired and also the only way to gain schematics is through llamas and they are gained by paid currency you can earn llamas.